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Expanding the Smash community with reddit

Nintendude

Smash Hero
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
5,024
Location
San Francisco
I'm sure most of you are familiar with reddit, but if you aren't, reddit is an extremely large general interest internet community. The basic premise is that people post topics or interesting links and people vote on them (an upvote or a downvote). Heavily upvoted posts tend to go viral since they appear on the front few pages of reddit, where they are even further upvoted.

Now, within reddit there are thousands of "subreddits." Subreddits are subcommunities of reddit catering to a specific interest, such as gaming, music, art, etc. If you subscribe to a subreddit, then you'll see upvoted posts in that subreddit in addition to all the popular stuff on the main page. There are subreddits for individual gaming communities, and this is where Smash comes in.

A list of gaming subreddits can be seen here. As you can see, games such as Minecraft, Starcraft, TF2, WoW, and Pokemon have over 10000 subscribers. That's likely way more than the number of people that actively browse Smashboards. Even single player games like the Elder Scrolls games have around 1000 subscribers. Now, if all these games can have these kind of reddit communities, why not Smash?

I think one of the biggest problems with the Smash community, in terms of outreach, is that it is very isolated. Your average gamer knows that competitive Starcraft exists, but very few people (relative to the amount of people that play the game) know about competitive Smash. I think that Reddit is one way to address this problem. If we can get a Smash community going there, we can quickly advertise tournaments, livestreams, combo videos, and other things related to competitive Smash to thousands of new people.

The link to the Smash subreddit is www.reddit.com/r/smashbros
It has been pretty defunct for 3 years now and has only 50 subscribers. The main issue here is that people won't subscribe to an inactive subreddit. If we can somehow work to create activity on r/smashbros, we can attract the general population of reddit. Obviously these players may all be casual Brawl players, or even people just looking forward to the newly announced games, but that doesn't matter. If we can expose these people to competitive Smash, I bet we can get some new faces into this community, and get some people playing Melee again.

Sorry for the really long poorly written read. If you need clarification on anything, or has any ideas, please post here. And just to make it clear, I'm not advocating migrating to reddit, nor am I just advertising another Smash site. I'm asking you all to try to generate some activity on r/smashbros, so the general reddit gaming community will take notice and subscribe, and then keep it active without any help from Smashboards.

btw it's worth mentioning that I've contacted the founder of r/smashbros and got him to make me a moderator (my account there is Elbedhar), so I have full control over the subreddit.

TLDR: Let's try to form a Smash community on reddit. Go to www.reddit.com/r/smashbros, subscribe, post stuff, and tell your friends. We can hopefully expand the Smash community by doing this.
 

Dimitris

Smash Ace
Joined
Apr 13, 2010
Messages
571
That site is confusing at first.
Edit: still not sure if I subscribed to the smash reddit or not.
 

Nintendude

Smash Hero
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
5,024
Location
San Francisco
You have to click on the green +frontpage button. If it shows up as a red -frontpage button, then you are subscribed.
 

Eggm

Smash Hero
Joined
Aug 29, 2006
Messages
5,178
Location
Neptune, NJ
I pushed the + frontpage button. I signed up as Eggm.

Edit: This site is kinda confusing. <_< Guide plz?
 

Massive

Smash Champion
Joined
Aug 11, 2006
Messages
2,833
Location
Kansas City, MO
I pushed the + frontpage button. I signed up as Eggm.

Edit: This site is kinda confusing. <_< Guide plz?
Reddit is a customizable news feed.
Content is voted up or down by anyone with an account.
The top voted content is usually at the top (although you can sort by 'Hot', 'New', 'Best', etc.)

Hitting +frontpage on a subreddit will make articles from that subreddit appear on your front page. Additionally, hitting -frontpage will make articles from that subreddit dissapear from your front page.

Clicking the link will open the content of the link. Click on 'comments' to see what people are saying about it (often more interesting/funnier than the actual link).

Users have 'karma' ratings based on the number of up or down votes they receive from posting comments or links.

Votes are anonymous unless you disable anonymous voting (not a great idea).

Picture links are common, as are youtube links. Most news is usually fresh. Reposts are tolerated but frowned upon.

Reddit is the evolved form of 4chan (moonstone).

Girls are not (as) afraid to post there. They are still harassed.

Reddit is HIGHLY addictive, be careful.

That should get you started.
 

Eggm

Smash Hero
Joined
Aug 29, 2006
Messages
5,178
Location
Neptune, NJ
Reddit is a customizable news feed.
Content is voted up or down by anyone with an account.
The top voted content is usually at the top (although you can sort by 'Hot', 'New', 'Best', etc.)

Hitting +frontpage on a subreddit will make articles from that subreddit appear on your front page. Additionally, hitting -frontpage will make articles from that subreddit dissapear from your front page.

Clicking the link will open the content of the link. Click on 'comments' to see what people are saying about it (often more interesting/funnier than the actual link).

Users have 'karma' ratings based on the number of up or down votes they receive from posting comments or links.

Votes are anonymous unless you disable anonymous voting (not a great idea).

Picture links are common, as are youtube links. Most news is usually fresh. Reposts are tolerated but frowned upon.

Reddit is the evolved form of 4chan (moonstone).

Girls are not (as) afraid to post there. They are still harassed.

Reddit is HIGHLY addictive, be careful.

That should get you started.
Hm, i've never used 4chan either, so maybe that's why it seems so strange. Anyway the guide helped a little thanks. To me I guess it seems like youtube, for... forum topics/threads? like you can subscribe to stuff you find interesting and people will make posts about it with pictures and stuff? I dunno lol.
 

Nintendude

Smash Hero
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
5,024
Location
San Francisco
I think it kind of grows on you after awhile. It sort of became my news source since everything interesting ends up on the front page within hours of being posted, and best of all, it is a customized news source, in addition to a good source of laughs.

Anyway, my goal isn't to get the Smash community interested in reddit. I just think that Smashboards needs to give r/smashbros a bit of a boost in order to get off of the ground. A subreddit is one of those things that feeds off of its own activity, perpetuates its own growth, etc. It just needs a catalyst; in this case, Smashboards users.
 

Dark Hart

Rejected by Azua
Joined
Mar 25, 2008
Messages
11,251
Location
Death Row, North Carolina
NA had been a leader in online smash communities for years.

This man basically taught me Melee since he wrote basic guides on every character in Melee. And by basic I mean for nubs.

Never could quite make that Sage status though, right NA? ;)
 

Max?

Smash Champion
Joined
Mar 4, 2011
Messages
2,255
Location
Falco Bair
NINTENDUDE GOOD AT VIDEO GAME, NOW HE WORTH LISTENING TO.

mirite?


On topic tho, this is a pretty good idea, and I'm fully willing to support this.
 

Sinji

Smash Master
Joined
Apr 27, 2010
Messages
3,370
Location
Brooklyn New York
NNID
Sinjis
3DS FC
0361-6602-9839
Honestly, you have to be a top player just to get noticed.

Seriously, help the guy out.
 

Nintendude

Smash Hero
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
5,024
Location
San Francisco
Good work so far, everyone. In just 4 days we've already doubled the amount of subscribers!
btw, people should upvote that post spanyam made.
 

Winnar

Smash Lord
Joined
Aug 29, 2007
Messages
1,921
Location
Mississippi
Smash publicity all the way. Should we consider setting up an individual subreddit for Melee? I like seeing some 64 stuff occasionally, but having to sift through Brawl matches could become a pain if this ever takes off.
One step at a time. Once the reddit smash community can sustain branching off like that, then yeah that might be a good idea
 

ILM

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Oct 11, 2010
Messages
218
Downvotes are sometimes automatic due to reddit's antispam system.
 

ZeldaFreak0309

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Mar 13, 2005
Messages
391
Location
Fremont, CA
Oh, this is a good idea.

The advantage of having a smash subreddit is the upvote system: for example, on the forums you have a bunch of video threads and it's sometimes hard to know which videos are good/which to watch, but on reddit, someone can post a set and if it's good it'll be upvoted and appear on top of the frontpage. It's a really good medium for curating content so you should all use it! Go to www.reddit.com/r/starcraft to see an example of what it's like.
 

Winnar

Smash Lord
Joined
Aug 29, 2007
Messages
1,921
Location
Mississippi
Zgetto teaches DI is at +2 after 4 down votes

I want to help supply stuff but I don't know what kind of links people want to see

I guess I could make a submission just asking what people want to see lol
 

Nintendude

Smash Hero
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
5,024
Location
San Francisco
idk about reddit actually really expanding the smash community alot. maybe it could be possible who knows
I'm not sure how effective it will be but really, I don't see how you can go wrong by promoting tournaments on a website with millions of users and over 500,000 gamers. Just look at r/Minecraft and it's 50,000+ subscribers....
 

Shadic

Alakadoof?
Joined
Dec 18, 2003
Messages
5,695
Location
Olympia, WA
NNID
Shadoof
I've been posting comments and whatnot on /r/smashbros and upvoting anything Smash related I see on /r/gaming for awhile. Getting more attention to /r/gaming would be nice, instead of the nostalgia-inducing pictures that cover the front page these days.
 

Nintendude

Smash Hero
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
5,024
Location
San Francisco
I've been posting comments and whatnot on /r/smashbros and upvoting anything Smash related I see on /r/gaming for awhile. Getting more attention to /r/gaming would be nice, instead of the nostalgia-inducing pictures that cover the front page these days.
I crossposted the YSK post that I made on r/gaming (and conveniently mentioned r/smashbros in the title). It really helped a lot (the traffic stats show a big spike on that day) so people should definitely do this when possible.
 

spanyam

Smash Rookie
Joined
Aug 27, 2010
Messages
4
Good stuff so far. The number of subscribers has gone from 68 to 221 in just a week, and I also notice at least 2 or 3 links being posted each day. Like nintendude did, if you're contributing any links at all, do x-post to /r/gaming as well, with "[x-post from /r/smashbros]" in your title.
 

Winnar

Smash Lord
Joined
Aug 29, 2007
Messages
1,921
Location
Mississippi
Can you give a better example? Does the x stand for something or is it literally just x-post?
 

Nintendude

Smash Hero
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
5,024
Location
San Francisco
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/igkem/ysk_how_to_play_super_smash_bros_and_other_n64/

x-post is just a shorthand for "crosspost." You can write either. Crosspost means that it was originally posted in a different subreddit.

There's almost 250 subscribers now! As much as it pains me to say it, what we really need to boost numbers even more is Brawl representation. Unfortunately, they didn't seem very responsive or interested. Either that or reddit is secretly full of Melee / 64 fans.
 
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